“And besides, on Social Network, I didn’t really agree with the critics’ praise. It interested me that Social Network was about friendships that dissolved through this thing that promised friendships, but I didn’t think we were ripping the lid off anything. The movie is true to a time and a kind of person, but I was never trying to turn a mirror on a generation” — Director David Fincher, in an interview with W Magazine (February 2011)
When David Fincher’s The Social Network hit theatres this past October, critics and fans alike seemed to crowd around their computer screens to relish in the notion that a movie had spoken to their lives. Reviewers heralded it as a film that defined a generation. Karina Mitchell of CBS raved, “This complex drama stylishly captures a defining moment within a generation that is unprecedented in its connectedness.” Robert Dougherty of the Associated Press chimed in, “Aaron Sorkin’s jam packed script, David Fincher’s latest leap forward, and the story of our online generation made The Social Network ‘liked’ by nearly everyone.” And of course, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone — the man whose livelihood depends on exaggeration — argued that the “final image of solitary Mark at his computer has to resonate for a generation of users (the drug term seems apt) sitting in front of a glowing screen pretending not to be alone.”
One could suggest that these reviews mirrored, or even triggered, the responses of impressionable viewers —
Tweets:
Veronique Anderson: went to see the social network yesterday. defines our generation in a good AND bad way. 23-Oct-2010 10:38 AM
Pippy: The movie that defines our generation, The Social Network. 09-Oct-2010 16:42 PM
Keian: The Social Network was fantastic. Truly a generation defining movie. 24-Sep-2010 03:28 AM
It isn’t clear what was more fascinating, the fact that professional film critics and Tweeters did not have access to a thesaurus, or that the meme went as viral as it did. Whether The Social Network was celebrated or dismissed, audiences needed to contend with this heavy baggage.
What to make of this trend that’s been circulating since the film’s opening? While the film has rightfully been praised for its crisp handling of multiple time-lines and razor-sharp performances, the idea that it actually has something to say about on-line social networking is puzzling. In fact, some are so keen to take even the title literally, that they miss that screenwriter Sorkin is more interested in networks of ivy-league privilege — and who they exclude — than anything else.
An issue that has been explored by a handful of critics has been the way the film depicts young women. “The Social Network doesn’t include a single well-drawn female character — there’s no denying that — and this kind of thing is problematic for Hollywood on the large scale,” says Jef Catapang, a staff writer for Urbanology. “I think that’s where the sting comes from, because it’s rare to see an intelligent movie both getting raves and putting butts in theatre seats. And so here comes The Social Network, but it’s the same old guard. I get why that’s disappointing.”
Nick McCarthy, a contributor to New York City’s alternative bi-weekly L Magazine shares, “I was bothered by the depictions immediately after leaving the theatre. But, upon re-watching recently, I can’t help but think that it was all deliberate. The perception these characters have of women has passed through to the medium. However, it’s still rather inexcusable to either sack the lady characters with ‘batshit crazy, naive catalyst’ (Eduardo’s girlfriend) or ‘exposition and theme robotron’ (Rashida Jones).”
It’s exactly this dichotomy that is problematic, as women in the film are boxed into frustrating clichés. On one end, we are given Eduardo Saverin’s girlfriend, Christy (Brenda Song). She is painted simply as hyper-sexualized and violently unstable. In the middle of the film, Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) laments, “Christy’s crazy, she’s jealous, she’s irrational, and I’m frightened of her.” In a subsequent scene, Christy accuses Eduardo of cheating on her and sets aflame a scarf that he has gifted her. Alternatively, we are given Erica Albright (Rooney Mara), the ex-girlfriend of Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), who, while a sympathetic figure, is cold and unforgiving. As an audience we are led to believe that men are complex and innovative, while women are either temperamental “hotties” or rational and small-breasted.
The film particularly lacks in nuance regarding depictions of racial diversity, so much so that it is almost easy to take the film at face value as one of rivalrous white characters fighting over intellectual property. While the suggestion that actors of a particular ethnicity convey more “authenticity” in representing their particular background entails an entirely different discussion, the casting of English-American Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin (a Brazilian-born American) and of Max Minghella (an actor of Italian-Japanese descent, born and raised in England) as Divya Narendra (an Indian-American) is an issue worth considering. It’s difficult to believe that there was a dearth of such underrepresented and willing actors in Hollywood at the time of pre-production, so much so that the filmmakers could not look beyond the recognizable names that ultimately participated.
Much of the commentary on the The Social Network suggests that Fincher and Sorkin have tapped into how Facebook has transformed the way in which Generation Y interacts with each other, perhaps ironically within a vacuum of anti-social behaviour. Indeed, the final scene depicts a solitary Zuckerberg sitting at a computer, robotically clicking his “refresh” button, waiting for a friend request to be accepted. In the eagerness to read the film as a treatise on relationships as mediated through the alienating mechanisms of technology, it is perhaps easy to overlook the basic literalism of the actual title, and to what it actually refers. From the start, as McCarthy suggests, the filmmakers use university life as a microcosm for society in general, and that “The Social Network they are most interested in is hierarchy.”
Denise Brunsdon, Director of Social Media for GCI Group, agrees that the film “is most clever in juxtaposing the elitist Harvard social network, which uses and seemingly rejects Zuckerberg, against the elitism of techy start-up California, which Zuckerberg then uses to reject Harvard. Ironically, both of these realms remain dominated by white males, which leaves me wondering what exactly the majority of viewers are expected to connect with when watching this movie, ostensibly only that we all have Facebook accounts.”
In the opening scene depicting Zuckerberg and his date Erica sparring over beers, he says he needs to “do something substantial” to catch the attention of the exclusive final clubs. The scene hints at much of what the audience will come to learn of the enigmatic character — that his actions are fueled by both a neurotic jealousy of and an intense rivalry with the guys who “row crew” Hence, the trajectory of the film’s narrative may have to do more with Zuckerberg’s ambition toward attaining a certain degree of status and privilege, rather than commenting overall upon an entire generation’s fractured relationship with online social media.
In interrogating the “movie of a generation” meme, one may be inclined to ask whose generation this film defines or showcases. The characters in the film are by and large young, white, middle-to-upper-class men who squabble over the fate and proprietorship of a multi-billion dollar enterprise. The film’s clinical approach to gender and race may well be intentional on the part of Fincher and Sorkin to make a commentary on the insularity of the characters’ lives, but the reception by critics and audience begs a significant question — why are the lives of Harvard students made to stand in for the experiences and aspirations of an entire generation? The Social Network consciously tells the story of a very specific community of suddenly powerful young, straight, and white men.
Nick Davis, an Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies at Northwestern University, observes that the movie of our generation claim is not a truth claim, “but a marketing discourse, tapping into the widespread appeal not only of having a movie for your generation, but of being a generation.
“I won’t lie,” he continues, “I do think there might be a Facebook generation. But I do think, if you look at The Social Network, it’s not making anything seem all that epochal or universal except, maybe, the hoary idea of the megalomaniacal impulse that gets sparked by a lover’s rejection. But what generation has the copyright on that?”
He continues by thinking through the references of “we” and “us” — to who is that actually referring when the film is discussed? “[We] have to be careful about that ‘we’; even more than its perspective on race and gender, I found the film’s myopia about class and location pretty irksome. By not depicting the spread of Facebook, it just implies that the whole world is sponged into it, entailing a paradigm shift for everyone, all of ‘us.’”
If The Social Network triggered Internet users to closely re-evaluate their consumption of and participation in online media, that is surely another boon in the film’s trove of critical citations, industry awards and to its overall place in the cultural zeitgeist. The film may well endure as “The Facebook Movie”; a rare example of a movie that enjoys credibility as a cinematic gem and as a snapshot of a generation’s view of itself. However, it is also worthwhile to pause and consider that not everyone is “logged onto” the world of Facebook and Twitter. That audience must have viewed a very different film indeed.
